


Fragile

by imsfire



Series: Rogue One Anniversary prompts [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Cassian on heavy drugs trying to talk, F/M, Injury, Post-Scarif, Recovery, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Survival, for the prompt favourite character dynamic AND favourite AU, med bay scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 17:38:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13012809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Choices have always been between bad and worse, not between one hope and another.  When every dream has been impossible, all your life, what do you do when you wish for something and find that maybe it could be real?





	Fragile

**Author's Note:**

> A companion piece of sorts to the earlier story "Waiting".

The first time they let her in, he was just out of the last of four surgeries, and floating, like a man in a dream.  She stood in front of the bacta tank watching him, trying to think her way through a confusion of desires and fears, feelings she had never known or believed she could know. 

He was caught between nowhere and time, and she was trapped with him, impaled on indecision and a blinding, terrifying hope.

It was hard work, thinking through these things, finding her way to some kind of knowledge.  Jyn persisted.  She waited and watched and thought.  And thought.

_I know what I want.  I do.  Or at least, I know  what I wish._

_But I don’t know what to do._  

Choices have always been between bad and worse, not between one hope and another.  When every dream has been impossible, all your life, what do you do when you wish for something and find that maybe it could be real? 

_I have not wished at all, for so long…_

The sixth day was the day of all the red alerts and emergencies, the day when once again she thought every moment would be her last, and his.  She stood quietly through all the commotion, stationed herself at the doors of the med-bay, keeping out of the way, not knowing what else to do or where else to go.  At least she was nearby; and there was something reassuring about watching the medics and nurses calmly going about their work, seeing how they withheld themselves from fear and hysteria in order to keep tending to their patients, to the very last if need be.  It was an eye in the storm, and Jyn leaned against a wall and waited out the terror.  Nearby to him, to the very last.

When it was all over, she tried to move away and found herself sitting down suddenly.  She had to haul herself up bodily from the floor, because her legs had turned to straws.

Early on the seventh day they admitted her to a private room, to a narrow bed and a motionless figure.  Cassian’s eyes were closed, and deep-shadowed, and all the expression lines of his face were smoothed out in sleep.  It seemed strange to see his mouth relaxed and soft, that was usually so expressively tense, masking or revealing the maze of emotions within.

He didn’t move.

“How much longer will he be unconscious?” she asked the droid who’d admitted her to the room.

“Captain Andor was awake earlier.   If you speak to him, no doubt he will return to consciousness.”

Jyn shook her head.  “I don’t want to disturb him.  He needs the rest.”

Nonetheless she sat down, and after a time she reached out.  Very carefully she threaded her hand into his.  Remembered those strong fingers clutching the back of her old utility vest, holding her close.  His heart drumming against her breast.

_We thought we were going to die.  It seemed the likeliest chance.  Yet here we are._

Her own leg still throbbed sometimes, and her chest, bone regrowth shots working on her ribcage and all the hairline fractures in tibia and fibula, and the heel bone, what was that called again?  But it was the ache of healing, and her bruises and sprains and cuts and burns were knitting up fast too, under the sticky squares of bacta patches.  And she had survived, against all odds they both had.

She sat and held Cassian’s hand, and watched the tiny movements of his nostrils, his eyelids.  _Here we are, we are still here._

After an uncountable time he woke and lay blinking at her sleepily.  After a while longer his brain seemed to wake as well, and he smiled, dreamy and happy, and said “Sshin…”

Her name, presumably, slurred and weak but at least he remembered it. 

She said “Yes,” and her heart caught in her ribs.  She didn’t know what else to say.  “Hello…” 

Cassian’s eyes slid shut; he dozed again.  She sat watching him.  He breathed, in his sleep, he smiled faintly.  His eyelids fluttered and for a second he blinked, drifting back towards wakefulness, peering up through those long lashes; the smile deepened and then softened again as his eyes closed once more.  He slept and woke and breathed quietly on the boundaries of consciousness. 

After about twenty minutes he opened his eyes quite normally and said “You’re here…”

“Yes, still here.”

“Jyn…”  Much less blurry this time. 

“Yes.  Welcome back.”  That got her a smile, and a tiny quiver of outbreath that might have been amusement.  “How are you feeling?  Do you want me to get a medic?”

“Uh… ‘m good.  No pain, not feelin’ pain – ‘nywhere…”  His voice tailed off with the effort of speaking but he inhaled again and went on, quiet and fragile but determined.  “Mmhey… Hey, Jyn.  Am I – yeah - I‘m stoned outa my – outa my mind…  They giv’n me the – goodstuff, huh…”

“Well, yes.  You’ve had four spinal surgeries in five days, so, yeah, pain relief.  Kind of crucial, I should think.”

“Ah, yeah…”

 Ah, she wanted to curl herself round him like a fire lizard and protect him against the world.  He was so sleepy and helpless and it hurt her to see how his mastery of situation and strategy and weaponry and cause, and his certainty, his strength and sharp speed, had all fallen like dust in the rain. 

“Mmm,” Cassian said.  He had a thinking face on now, and it was naked and open in a way his expression had been just once or twice in the time she’d known him.  She imagined him trying to grasp the situation through the fog of analgesia.  He was the kind of man who would always need to get to grips with whatever was going on, after all, no matter how hard it was.  He screwed his eyes up; then opened them wide and said abruptly “Oh Jyn – the – the – pans.  No.  No, pl – pl – please – no – _plams_.  Did we?  Send, send –“ and then sotto voce but lucid and furious with himself “ ** _Fuck_** …  **Plans**.  Did we send the -?”  

She squeezed his hand tightly. “Yes.  We sent the plans.”

“Did?”  His smile widened, incredulous, desperate with hope.

“Yes.  Yes, we did.”  How in the stars was she to sum up the events of the last few days? “A – a lot’s been going on.  But it’s okay.  They got them.  They found the weakness.  They did it, they destroyed it, last night, just a few hours ago.  You were still under.”

“Destroyed?”

“Yeah.  It’s gone.  Blew it up.”

Cassian drew in a hard quick breath and exhaled it, and his hand shook in hers for a moment.  His face went tight and then loose, and almost lost, and when he closed his eyes there were tears pressed out from under those dark lashes.  They ran down his temples and made wet marks on the frost-white pillow.

She had no idea how to comfort this raw emotion, when she knew him so little and she’d never known much of comfort herself; but they had known one another despite that, and she reached into that wordless knowledge, and lifted his hand up, and laced her fingers through his more tightly.  “It’s all over.  Please don’t cry.  We did it, it was all worth it…”

Cassian swallowed and said hoarsely “Am I crying?  My face - feels –“

“Yes.  Shh, it’s okay.” She wanted to reach out and stroke the tears off his skin.  Would that be too intimate?  She wanted to touch him, it was ridiculous how much.

He hadn’t minded her touch; her hand on his sleeve in the ship, her arm wrapped round his waist as they staggered towards oblivion.  He’d smiled at her.  He was smiling at her now.

She put out her hand and brushed a single teardrop away gently.  He blinked and smiled, and another tear welled up; and Jyn had to blink hard too.  They’d been so near the end, and yet here they were, here they were, frail and alive…

“Do you want me to get a medic?” she asked again.

“No…  No, I’m good.  Don’t go.  Stay – with me, stay…”

“Yes.”  She bit her lip.  It would be so unfair to cry in front of him when he was like this.  She needed to be in control; someone had to be strong for him while he was so fragile.  “Yes, I’m here, I’m staying.”

She meant more than just _now_ , she heard it in her own voice before she’d even realised it; and he seemed to hear it too, his eyes went wide, and another tear slipped out despite his best attempts to blink it away.  Such dark eyes, so warm as gradually they woke up a little more, and a little more yet.  His tired face smiling, gradually more consciously.  Her heart fought to climb out of its prison and run to him. 

“You,” he said.  And looked at her, really awake now, really focussing.  He grinned.  As though he’d seen something glorious. 

Jyn swallowed. “Me?”

“You.”  Cassian gave a tiny nod of his head, barely a movement at all, screwing his eyes up for a second in a childlike double wink.  “Yeah.  You.”

 _Oh, my dear, my friend, my friend, yes, yes, you, you, you,_ sang her heart; and she sat and stroked his hand, and smiled through her own tears.


End file.
